Meet Gus
If you want to rekindle your interest in retrieving travel bugs, look no further. A unique travel bug is out there and the critics are raving!
"This is, without a doubt, the friendliest travel bug I've ever come across!"
"This would be the only TB that has brought itself up to me!"
"I must say that Gus is the friendliest and softest TB I have ever had the pleasure of meeting."
How many Beanie Baby travel bugs can there be? While every cache has something unique about it, travel bugs often wane into lackluster stuffed animals, plastic toys or metal vehicles. Travel bugs with a specific mission can remain tethered to a cache for months, frightening away cachers who feel they cannot help in its mission. And how many times have you tried for the elusive Jeep 4x4 TB, only to discover it is missing from the cache?
Gus, the travel bug, was "released" on March 7, 2004 by its owners. It is always spotted "in the hands of the owner". It weighs more than 90 pounds, is self-drying when it gets wet, and will never be reported missing because it returns when called.
Gus must be the only Travel Bug that finds its own caches. You see, Gus, the TB, is a light-colored Golden Retriever, whose owner goes by the alias Gus the Golden.
"We got this travel bug at the Amazing Cache Race event in Roanoke Virginia. After some thought, we decided to do something a little out of the ordinary, and attached it to our namesake's leash. This way, we can log his actual mileage caching." Gus has logged over 700 miles and has several cache finds of his own. His first FTF was the Traditional-to-Virtual Cache for Kids in Short Pump, Virginia.
"He went right to the hide and placed his nose on the cache" reports his owner. He has visited caches in VA, WV, KY, and NC, including several night caches, canoe caches, and one night canoe cache, The Night Country.
Gus must be the only Travel Bug that finds its own caches. He doesn't search like a dog. Instead, he searches primarily by sight. He watches where his owners are headed and starts looking into the obvious spots, such as hollow trees, stumps, and under overhangs.
He has uncovered concealed containers using his paws, then waits for his humans to open it. "Gus found the Audie Murphy Memorial Cache by himself," said his owner. "We were about 80 feet from where our GPS zeroed. Gus led us to the hide first, but we ignored it because it was so far off. After about 15 minutes, we heard the sound of a cache getting thunked. We walked over and found Gus had cleared away some of the hiding material. He was hitting the cache container with his paw and grinning in self-satisfaction!"
As a travel bug that moves along with its owner, he is one of the most unique TBs out there. While he is too big to actually leave in a cache, geocachers can log him as a find if they meet him on the trail or at a cache event. So, if you see a grinning Golden Retriever while geocaching, see if you can log him as the friendliest TB you'll ever find.
